


Fallen angels

by wanderingsmith



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: M/M, Mostly-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 15:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingsmith/pseuds/wanderingsmith
Summary: His leg started to collapse and Billy felt darkness rising for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd be daft enough to pay me for this. As it is thought, so let it be said; you make the toys, I play with 'em.
> 
> ...I'm sorry?

His leg started to collapse and Billy felt darkness rising for him.

But when his knee touched plank, panic bubbled up at not seeing or feeling Goody nearby and he knew he HAD to somehow catch himself from the drop and get.the.fuck.up. and find Goody. NOW, Billy! 

'That yell is the only thing that got my fingers on that trigger, the battalion's last two fights.' The memory of his voice snapped enough energy in Billy that he remembered Goody had fallen back behind him as they'd been hit: and then the Rebel yell flowed easily through him and pulled him up, Gatling long forgotten, and he yelled himself into a spin to face the break Goody had fallen through. 

His chest locked and cut him off as his last running step pushed him off the ragged edge and into the blinding sun.

\--

The pain of the rounds blasting through him had shocked Goody's mind to silence. No thought left but gratitude that his last sight was Billy, standing at his side. The agony of hitting something after the blind fall took his last breath and he knew no more.

But he must have still been alive, because he heard Billy yell and his eyes somehow opened to find him. 

And he would have laughed if he was able. So long he'd been convinced that that winged shape was an owl diving for him; instead it was his own dark angel! 

Billy's body billowed dust as it shook the ground and rolled into him and he distantly knew agony had to have filled his mortal body. But Billy's earlier cry seemed to have revived his hearing and he could hear the Gatling, now, if as though through water, and without thinking of the impossibility of movement, he sluggishly sent his arm around Billy's shoulders, needing to protect his fallen angel.

\--

Sam's steps dragged ever slower as he passed dead and bleeding townsfolk. 

He knew who that crumpled grey shadow in the ash-hazed dirt ahead was. Had watched the bell tower get drilled and the shadows atop it disappear, before his horrified gaze had been pulled to the explosion of the damned Hell-spawned horror that had nearly destroyed yet another town. 

A step before he would have to crouch down and say goodbye to the haunted man who'd followed him here, a ray of light slashed through the ash particles in the air and on across the ragged shape, and Sam's tired eyes finally saw that it wasn't only thick Confederate grey before him. 

The angel of death's arm was thrown around his mysterious man of the orient, whether in last futile protection or dying affection. 

So much blood soaked vest, shirt, coat and pants; even trickles of iron-red playing specs of sunlight back at him along Billy's side, as though there was anything cheerful in this. 

But when he made himself crouch down and stiffly reach to shift Goody's wide collar aside to prove to himself his friend's heart no longer beat, he froze. And almost crumbled, himself, at the sight of the sweet *smile* half covered in smeared ash and flying wisps of dark hair. Even the blood tracing the lips like some mockery of kiss-mussed makeup took nothing away from the clear joy that had been in Goody's last moments.

"What you lost in the fire, you've found in the ashes, my friend." 

When he heard Mrs. Cullen's determined steps come up behind him, Sam clenched his jaw and reached down to touch Goody's throat, respectfully working around Billy's face rather than disturb his rest a moment earlier than necessary. 

And then his breath caught and he dropped carefulness: that had been air on the back of his hand! He was silently praying as he quickly shifted his palm to Goody's lips; he as little wanted to tell Billy his partner was dead as he himself wanted to bury his friend- Sam's eyes jerked up to Emma, already crouching at his side to untangle the men with as much care as she could, his voice nothing more than a whisper lost in the crackle of fire nearby, "They're alive."

**Author's Note:**

> This just appeared out of nowhere as I worked.  
> ..but since it was accompanied with enough clarity of thought to analyze the functioning of report that had been annoying me more than a week.. I call it all good.
> 
> It wasn't clear about how it wanted to end, though. (ie, canon or miracle)  
> However, when I mentioned it to someone, there was a clear vote for 'They're alive!'


End file.
